A typical electronic cabinet includes a frame which is designed to carry electronic equipment, and a set of panels which attaches to the frame. The set of panels, among other things, protects the electronic equipment against damage (e.g., prevents external objects from inadvertently hitting the equipment, prevents tampering, etc.) as well as protects users against injury (e.g., prevents bystanders from inadvertently coming into contact with bus bars carrying high-current power supply signals, etc.).
Some electronic cabinets have doors which open and close relative to the frames to facilitate access to the electronic equipment. The manufacturers of such cabinets typically provide openings between the doors and the frames to enable cables to pass therebetween (e.g., power cords, fiber optic communications lines, electrical signal wires, etc.).
Some manufacturers include metal within the electronic cabinet panels (i.e., the sides and doors) to decrease electromagnetic interference (EMI) emissions generated by the electronic equipment housed within the electronic cabinets. The metal functions as EMI shielding and, without such shielding, the equipment could release a substantial amount of EMI into the surrounding areas which could affect the operation of other equipment in the vicinity (e.g., the released EMI could prevent neighboring radio equipment from properly receiving communications signals, could corrupt network signals traveling through cables adjacent the backs of the equipment cabinets, etc.). Furthermore, particular agencies and committees (e.g., the FCC, ISO, ANSI, etc.) have set rudimentary standards which manufacturers must comply with, or attempt to comply with, depending upon the circumstances (e.g., depending on the application, location, zoning, etc.).
Unfortunately, there are deficiencies to the above-described conventional electronic cabinets. For example, even if the manufacturers include metal within the electronic cabinet panels to decrease EMI emissions generated by the electronic equipment housed therein, the cable openings between the doors and the frames are often large enough to allow a significant amount of EMI to escape. In some instances, the existence of such openings significantly hinders the placement of electronic equipment within the electronic cabinets, i.e., manufacturers struggle to design equipment layouts that position the circuitry at interior locations away from such openings in order to maintain compliance with pre-established agency and committee standards. Accordingly, such cable openings provide weakness in the EMI shielding capabilities of electronic cabinets and can hinder placement of electronic equipment within such cabinets.
Additionally, the cables exiting the electronic cabinets (e.g., the communications leaving the openings at the top of the cabinets toward cable troughs or raceways, the lines leaving openings at the bottom of the cabinets into raise floors, etc.) are often disorganized in appearance and thus awkward to manage. As a result, technicians attempting to work on such cabinets (e.g., technicians replacing cables, running new cables, etc.) may find their tasks cumbersome and unnecessarily time consuming due to having to work around and having to sort through dangling, and perhaps tangled, cables exiting the electronic cabinets.
Furthermore, unsecured cables, which carry high speed communications signals (e.g., RF signals, digital or analog electrical signals, fiber optic signals, etc.), are often susceptible to vibration. For example, subtle but frequent movements of the cables can corrupt the communications signals passing through such cables (e.g., introduce intermittent errors) which hinder the operation of the electronic equipment housed within the electronic cabinets (e.g., can require retransmission of the signals, can invoke error checking and correction operations, etc.).
The invention is directed to cable management techniques that utilize a section of flexible material which defines a set of grooves to hold a set of cables exiting an electronic cabinet. Such a device can be manufactured at a relatively low cost, and can effectively organize the set of cables so that such cables are orderly arranged and easy to follow. Furthermore, such a device can be configured to operate as a portion of an EMI shield to reduce EMI emissions which escape from the electronic cabinet.
One embodiment of the invention is directed to an electronic system (e.g., a data storage system, a general purpose computer, etc.) having electronic equipment, and an electronic cabinet which houses the electronic equipment. The electronic cabinet includes a support structure which is configured to carry the electronic equipment, and a door panel which is configured to pivotally mount to the support structure. The door panel and the support structure define an opening through which a set of cables is configured to pass. The electronic cabinet further includes a cable management assembly. The cable management assembly includes (i) a mounting bracket which is configured to mount to one of the support structure and the door panel at a location which is adjacent the opening, (ii) a section of flexible material which defines a set of grooves to hold the set of cables, and (iii) a fastener interconnected between the mounting bracket and the section of flexible material to fasten the section of flexible material to the mounting bracket. Accordingly, the placement of the cables relative to each other, as they exit the cabinet, can be easily controlled using the assembly.
In some arrangements, the section of flexible material includes a rubberized member (e.g., a molded or routed block of rubber). At least a portion of the rubberized member is configured to block electromagnetic interference (e.g., includes embedded metallic material, is coated with metallic paint, etc.). In one arrangement, the portion of the rubberized member, which is configured to block the electromagnetic interference, is at least 0.75 inches in length. Accordingly, the combination of the support structure, the door panel and the assembly can form an EMI shield (e.g., a Faraday cage) that substantially reduces EMI emissions generated by the electronic equipment.
In some arrangements, the set of cables includes communications lines having particular thicknesses. In these arrangements, the section of flexible material defines, as the set of grooves, a series of channels having widths which are less than or equal to the particular thicknesses of the communications lines. Accordingly, the assembly is capable of operating as a strain relief (e.g., to prevent the cable ends from pulling out of their connections, to avoid kinking the of cables, etc.). Additionally, the assembly dampens movement of the cables thus reducing the likelihood of signal corruption due to cable motion.
In some arrangements, the assembly further includes a retainer arm which couples to the mounting bracket and which is configured to enclose a set of open sides of the set of grooves. Accordingly, a user can close the retainer arm over the section of flexible material to lock the set of cables in place within the set of grooves.
In one arrangement, the assembly further includes a hinge which pivotally couples a first end of the retainer arm to the mounting bracket, and a thumbscrew which is configured to selectively (i) connect a second end of the retainer arm to the mounting bracket and (ii) disconnect the second end of the retainer arm from the mounting bracket. In this arrangement, the hinge and the thumbscrew enable the user to selectively open and close the retainer arm (i.e., by operating the thumbscrew and the arm) when adding a cable, removing a cable or simply reorganizing the positions of one or more cables within the assembly.
In one arrangement, the location adjacent the opening resides along a top edge of the door panel when the door panel is in a closed position relative to the support structure. This arrangement is well-suited for managing the cables when the cables extend from cabinet up to a cable raceway or trough along the ceiling.
The features of the invention, as described above, may be employed in electronic systems, devices and methods such as those of EMC Corporation of Hopkinton, Ma.